Changes

Receptivity is the capacity of admitting and retaining the Divine Workings.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p1</ref>

Receptivity: conscious of the Divine Will and surrendered to it.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p2</ref>

There is a state in which the sadhak is conscious of the Divine Force working in him or of its results at least and does not obstruct its descent or its action by his own mental activities, vital restlessness or physical obscurity and inertia. That is openness to the Divine. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/opening#p6</ref>

Opening is a change of the consciousness by which it becomes receptive to the Divine.

Opening means that the consciousness becomes opened to the Truth or the Divine to which it is now shut—it indicates a state of receptivity. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/opening#p1,p2</ref>

The power to receive the Divine Force and to feel its presence and the presence of the Mother in it and allow it to work, guiding one's sight and will and action. If this power and presence can be felt and this plasticity made the habit of the consciousness in action,—but plasticity to the Divine Force alone without bringing in any foreign element,—the eventual result is sure.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/the-divine-force-in-work#p4</ref>

''A:'' Instead of self-opening we could put receptivity, something that opens in order to receive. Now, instead of opening and receiving from all sides and from everyone, as is usually done, one opens only to the Divine to receive only the divine force. It is the very opposite of what men usually do. They are always open on the surface, they receive all the influences from all sides. And then this produces inside them what we might call a ''pot-pourri (Mother laughs)'' of all kinds of contradictory movements which naturally create countless difficulties. So here, you are advised to open only to the Divine and to receive only the divine force to the exclusion of everything else. This diminishes all difficulties almost entirely. Only one thing remain difficult. It is… One can do it and, unless one is in a state of total alchemy, well, it is difficult to be in contact with people, to speak to them, for example, to have any kind of exchange with them without absorbing something from them. It is difficult. If one is in a kind of… if one is in an atmosphere that’s like a filter, then everything that comes from outside is filtered before it touches you. But it is very difficult; it requires a very wide experience. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/7-july-1954#p75</ref>

Opening means that the consciousness becomes opened to the Truth or the Divine to which it is now shut—it indicates a state of receptivity.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwsa/29/opening#p2</ref>

...according to your personal attitude, you create within yourself the conditions for receiving what is done or not receiving it. And trust—indeed, trust in the Truth, trust in the Grace, trust in the divine Knowledge—this puts you in that state of receptivity in which you can receive these things.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/25-november-1953#p6</ref>

Each time that something of the Divine Truth and the Divine Force comes down to manifest upon earth, some change is effected in the earth's atmosphere. In the descent, those who are receptive are awakened to some inspiration from it, some touch, some beginning of sight. If they were capable of holding and expressing rightly what they receive, they would say, 'A great force has come down; I am in contact with it and what I understand of it, I will tell you.' But most of them are not capable of that, because they have small minds. They get illumined, possessed, as it were, and cry, 'I have the Divine Truth, I possess it whole and entire.'

<ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/9-june-1929#p7</ref>

==What is Receptivity in Different Parts of the Being?==

===Integral Receptivity===

Integral receptivity: the whole being is aware of the Divine Will and obeys it.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p3</ref>

===Psychic Receptivity===

Psychic receptivity: the psychic responds joyously to the ascending force.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p4</ref>

===Mental Receptivity===

Mental receptivity: always ready to learn.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p5</ref>

===Emotional Receptivity===

Emotional receptivity: emotions wanting to be divinised.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p6</ref>

===Vital Receptivity===

Vital receptivity happens only when the vital understands that it must be transformed.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p7</ref>

===Physical Receptivity===

Physical receptivity: that which one should not have except towards the Divine.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/receptivity#p9</ref>

===Supramentalised Receptivity===

Supramentalised receptivity: the receptivity of tomorrow.

...if you have aspiration, in itself it has a power. Only, this aspiration calls down an answer, and this answer, the effect, which is the result of the aspiration, depends upon each one, for it depends upon his receptivity. I know many people of this kind: they say, "Oh! But I aspire all the time and still I receive nothing." It is impossible that they should receive nothing, in the sense that the answer is sure to come. But it is they who do not receive. The answer comes but they are not receptive, so they receive nothing.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/06/28-april-1954#p5</ref>

Here, for each work given, the full strength and Grace are always given at the same time to do the work as it has to be done. If you do not feel the strength and the Grace, it proves that there is some mistake in your attitude. The faith is lacking or you have fallen back on old tracks and old creeds and thus you lose all receptivity.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/14/difficulties-in-work#p18</ref>

I don't think that forces have a limit, because in comparison with us they are certainly unlimited. But it's our capacity of reception that is limited. We cannot absorb them beyond a certain measure, and then we must keep a balance between the expenditure and the capacity to receive. If one spends suddenly in a kind of impulse—for example, in an impulsive movement—if one spends much more than one has received, one needs a brief moment of concentration, calm, receptivity to absorb universal forces. You must put yourself in a certain condition to receive them; and then, they last for a certain time, and once you have spent them you must begin again to receive them. It is in this sense that there are limits. It isn't the forces that are limited, it is the receptivity.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/07/4-may-1955#p17</ref>

===In the Physical===

The possibilities of illness are always there in your body and around you; you carry within you or there swarm about you the microbes and germs of every disease. How is it that all of a sudden you succumb to an illness which you did not have for years? You will say it is due to a "depression of the vital force". But from where does the depression come? It comes from some disharmony in the being, from a lack of receptivity to the divine forces. When you cut yourself off from the energy and light that sustain you, then there is this depression, there is created what medical science calls a "favourable ground" and something takes advantage of it. It is doubt, gloominess, lack of confidence, a selfish turning back upon yourself that cuts you off from the light and divine energy and gives the attack this advantage. It is this that is the cause of your falling ill and not microbes.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/19-may-1929#p14</ref>

If the body lacks receptivity altogether or if its receptivity is insufficient, one sees the inner correspondence with the psychological state which has brought about the illness and acts on that. Let us say the origin is vital. The vital absolutely refuses to change, it clings terrifically to the condition in which it is; then that is hopeless. You put the force, and usually it provokes an increase in the illness, produced by the resistance of the vital which did not want to accept anything. I speak of the vital but it can be the mind or something else.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/04/31-march-1951#p12</ref>

On one side, the action of the forces of Yoga hastens the movement of transformation of the being in those parts that are ready to receive and respond to the power that is at work upon it. Yoga, in this way, saves time. The whole world is in a process of progressive transformation; if you take up the discipline of Yoga, you speed up in yourself this process. The work that would require years in the ordinary course, can be done by Yoga in a few days and even in a few hours. But it is your inner consciousness that obeys this accelerating impulse; for the higher parts of your being readily follow the swift and concentrated movement of Yoga and lend themselves more easily to the continuous adjustment and adaptation that it necessitates. The body, on the other hand, is ordinarily dense, inert and apathetic. And if you have in this part something that is not responsive, if there is a resistance here, the reason is that the body is incapable of moving as quickly as the rest of the being. It must take time, it must walk at its own pace as it does in ordinary life. What happens is as when grown-up people walk too fast for children in their company; they have to stop at times and wait till the child who is lagging behind comes up and overtakes them. This divergence between the progress in the inner being and the inertia of the body often creates a dislocation in the system, and that manifests itself as an illness. This is why people who take up Yoga frequently begin by suffering from some physical discomfort or disorder. That need not happen if they are on their guard and careful. Or if there is a greater and unusual receptivity in the body, then too they escape. But an unmixed receptivity making the physical parts closely follow the pace of the inner transformation is hardly possible, unless the body has already been prepared in the past for the processes of Yoga. <ref>https://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/16-june-1929#p</ref>

==Receptivity and other Qualities==

===Perfection and Receptivity===

It may be said that perfection is attained, though it remains progressive, when the receptivity from below is equal to the force from above which wants to manifest.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/15/perfection#p6</ref>

Love is one of the great universal forces; it exists by itself and its movement is free and independent of the objects in which and through which it manifests. It manifests wherever it finds a possibility for manifestation, wherever there is receptivity, wherever there is some opening for it. What you call love and think of as a personal or individual thing is only your capacity to receive and manifest this universal force. But because it is universal, it is not therefore an unconscious force; it is a supremely conscious Power. Consciously it seeks for its manifestation and realisation upon earth; consciously it chooses its instruments, awakens to its vibrations those who are capable of an answer, endeavours to realise in them that which is its eternal aim, and when the instrument is not fit, drops it and turns to look for others. Men think that they have suddenly fallen in love; they see their love come and grow and then it fades—or, it may be, endures a little longer in some who are more specially fitted for its more lasting movement. But their sense in this of a personal experience all their own was an illusion. It was a wave from the everlasting sea of universal love.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/03/2-june-1929#p2</ref>

It is very simple, when people are told "be humble", they think immediately of "being humble before other men" and that humility is wrong. True humility is humility before the Divine, that is, a precise, exact, living sense that one is nothing, one can do nothing, understand nothing without the Divine, that even if one is exceptionally intelligent and capable, this is nothing in comparison with the divine Consciousness, and this sense one must always keep, because then one always has the true attitude of receptivity—a humble receptivity that does not put personal pretensions in opposition to the Divine.

<ref>http://incarnateword.in/cwm/05/13-may-1953#p10</ref>

=Why is Receptivity Important?=